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I spent about a month living on the blissful slopes of the Vinschgau valley my Freshman year before COVID-19 made Northern Italy a global hotspot and ended my trip early. One of the classes I took while I lived and learned at Brunnenburg castle focused on the human relationship to the land and farming, specifically in difficult conditions. In the Italian alps, the lack of flat land meant that farmers had to craft their entire lives around mitigating steepness. Their tools, techniques and even crops were different from those found in the flatter farms to the south. 

My biggest takeaway from that class was that things as simple as slopes can have exponentially enormous effects on how a piece of land is engaged with by its human and nonhuman inhabitants. 

The Loblolly stand, unlike Brunnenburg’s vineyards, is exceedingly flat. This flatness, too, informs how the stand is engaged with. The rest of the Guilford woods roll gently, with a few sharper inclines and drops in the northwestern section. It is because of this flatness that the Loblolly stand even exists at all. Land is much easier to farm on when it is flat, so the Loblolly stand made an ideal location for farming some 70 years ago. 

When the Quaker settlers that first came to Guilford county in the 18th century, I wonder if they had any idea the path that the land they farmed on would take. Alternatively, I wonder if the people indigenous to the Greensboro area knew that the farms and fields would eventually cede to forests. 

In Italy, pines were the dominant species in most of the alpine forests I visited. These were towering, branchy, stately trees that refused to sway in the wind. Their canopies were dense and allowed less light to the ground than many of the forests I’ve been in. They had owned the slopes for centuries and showed little sign of yielding. 

Because of the flatness of their habitat, it seems as though the Loblolly behave differently than their Italian cousins. The Loblolly do not need to fear erosion to the degree that the Italian pines do, nor do they have to hold on to a steep slope. They can sway in the wind without fear of falling off the mountain. Their trunks are more slender, and, unlike other pine species, the Loblolly are a bit top-heavy. 

Because of their comfortable environment, the Loblolly are afforded certain privileges that aren’t granted to trees in less hospitable conditions. Their needles behave differently, too. The Loblolly drop long, triumvirate clusters that get caught on the branches of saplings and hang like ornaments. The Larch and Spruce that grow in Italy have much shorter needles that fall straight to the ground. I’ve come to really love the ornamentation that the Loblolly leave; it’s an endearing interaction with the other trees in their environment. 

Flatness is a defining feature of the Loblolly, and I believe it is a major influence on their appearance and behavior. In outdoors circles, I feel like huge mountains and sweeping vistas often get a lot of love, but I have really come to appreciate the perfectness of a flat, forested piece of land. It imbues just as much sublime quality, even if it is not as obvious as an alpine peak.

While I was walking in the woods I found this bridge. It made me reflect on how many people must have crossed it. The years of wear could be seen. It seems like a branch was holding this bridge up. I am not sure if it was part of the underground railroad or not. It was near the giant tree. I know that the Quakers were some of the first groups of organized people to help free the ensalved Africans. That still does not change the agony and sadness they carried in their hearts. For the longest time I thought I would be able to sense see the pain and sorrow if I touched the tree. Obviously by just touching a tree I would not get a vision that sends me back into the future. However, when I came upon the tree it was still equally breathtaking. It is so tall that it seems like it is reaching to the heavens assisting all the souls lost along the way reach it. The circumference of the trunk is so large that not even the strongest of bulldozers would be able to knock it down. Oh the stories this tree holds. If only I could hear it tell them. The Guilford library website does a thorough job of explaining the significance of the tree that still stands today.

I talked in my last entry of how I came to the Loblolly stand feeling beaten down by my work and school. I felt like I was missing parts of myself that I wished I wasn’t. When I left, after I noticed the energetic sway of the Loblolly, I felt better. My Zoom-induced headache was gone, my lungs felt clearer, and legs had spring to them that wasn’t there before. I know that this is not a unique experience–plenty of people go to the woods because it makes them feel good–but I have been unsure why. 

In my research for this journal I learned that in 1982 the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries sought to encapsulate the energizing quality of a walk in the woods. They decided to call it shinrin-yoku, which roughly means “forest bathing.” Beyond just their aesthetic quality, spending time in forests has literal health benefits. 

According to research done by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, rees produce a set of chemicals called Phytoncides that they use as a natural pesticide. Phytoncides benefit humans by causing humans’ white blood cell counts to increase. Simply spending time amongst trees makes our bodies more resilient to disease. Other studies and research have shown connections between spending time in forests and decreased blood pressure and lowered levels of stress induced chemicals in the body like cortisol. 

There are also benefits of walking barefoot outside. Barefoot walks also increase white blood cell counts and can have a positive effect on joints. 

On a recent afternoon when my cortisol level was feeling especially high, I decided to decamp to the Loblolly stand to see if I could glean some of the benefits of forest bathing. I was feeling frustrated with school and bored with work and I needed to give my brain a break. I left for the stand at 3:00, after an especially tedious macroeconomics class. 

I didn’t even bring any shoes, which ended up being painful in some spots. The Loblolly were, of course, kinder to the soles of my feet. The cushion of their needles is perfect for walking barefoot outside. I abandoned the trail and found one of the more remote spots in the stand, where I could soak in the senses of the forest without much interruption. 

The way the fallen Loblolly needles move is like snow or sand; the surface of the forest floor is never quite the same, and always seems to be shifting one way or another. I found a needle-drift and laid down. 

Sometimes the needles would poke through my clothes, but it wasn’t an unwelcome interruption. I was glad to be reminded of what was beneath and around me. I stayed in the stand until the sun set over the woods’ mild hills and past my apartment. When I got home, I semi-consciously decided to skip my homework for the evening. I got out some Salmon I had been saving and made a nice dinner for my girlfriend and myself. I felt better.

This year, I have run intermittently in the Guilford woods. I am a person who needs a team, or a workout partner at least, to keep a consistent exercise routine. I love to move, but ever since graduating high school I have found it increasingly difficult to find movement in my day to day. This pandemic-year especially has been a challenge for me. It is both a great gift and a significant burden that something as simple as movement is so connected to my emotional state. This year I have struggled to get into a consistent habit of exercise and the longer I have gone without movement the worse I have felt overall. As I have felt worse I have been less inclined to move. It is a cruel feedback loop that I wish terribly could be inverted. 

I miss the ease of movement I used to have. A year ago, or two, I was constantly seeking and finding movement in my day to day. I would run up flights of stairs and jump on ledges. I would climb trees and roll through the grass. I still do these things, but they are not intrinsic to how I move in the world anymore. If I want to climb a tree I have to set it as an intention, carve out time to pursue it, and follow through on my personal commitment. I think, and hope, that the loss of my intrinsic tendency towards movement is a product of the pandemic we are currently in. 

Wednesdays are my hardest day of the week. I usually wake up at 8:00, work until 10:00, go to class from 10:00 to 12:00, go to work meetings from 12:00 to 3:00, after which I start my tasks for my job and homework. I have a really difficult time being on Zoom for five hours straight. What I need after all those meetings is outside time, and movement, but I often feel too beat down to do anything beyond making myself a snack and scrolling or reading or watching TV. On a recent Wednesday I left my work Zoom feeling especially dejected, so I called my mom, who encouraged me to go for a walk outside. As I often am, I was led to the pine stand. I took a different path than usual–around the edge of the woods as opposed to the path closest the lake–and I ended up in the northernmost section of the stand. I was exhausted, and I wanted nothing more than a mental and physical break. I put my headphones in and found a spot softened by needles to lay down. 

I laid back and realized I had spent very little time looking at the canopy of the Loblolly stand. I had spent hours looking at the ground, the stumps, the trunks, the branches–but I had never looked up long enough to notice the constant movement of the entire stand. 

I have frequently noted how the Loblolly behavior and environment differ dramatically from the rest of the surrounding forest. To a degree, I expected that going into this project. Of course a pine stand would differ from its deciduous surroundings. I did not expect the trees to move differently.

When most trees move it is gentle and expected. Oak and Beech branches sway in the wind and I could care less. It makes sense that their branches move while their weighty trunks don’t. 

The Loblolly sway with a full bodiedness that seems nothing short of arrogant. They don’t have any branches until 30, 40, or even 60 feet up their trunks. Their brief crowns weigh heavy on their heads and pull them to and fro in a rhythm seemingly independent of the wind. It is a circular swaying, and each tree has an independent path that it traces emerald on blue against the sky. The Loblolly have significant structural differences than most other trees, pines included. Their tall, slender trunks bare of branches save for the last several meters afford them remarkable freedom of movement. 

It is an admirable movement, and one that feels deeply independent. Movement is a part of what gives the Loblolly their character. I hope I can find that same freedom of movement again soon. When I look up, I feel like I can. 

A chill shudders through my aching spine sore from the sloppy deadlifts and rainy weekend as I walk down the path to my neighbors home. The field of grass dances in harmony with the barking dogs and their new friend; my sister and the puppies’ eyes wide with delight. “Thud, thud, thud” my worn birkenstock clogs hit the gravel with forgiveness, the small descent more enticing than the smaller uphill to follow. The setting sun to the left of me, the scene is rather picturesque— quite the reprieve from the rumbling clouds the night before now headed east with little haste. The damp coldness mocks the summer’s humidity, but here, the creatures know that the break of spring will sink it’s beautiful claws into the pall by the end of the week.The bristle of leaves lie together, united like on sacred ground they are unwilling to give up. Maybe most able to have a free spirit, these dead lie stubborn and stagnant in their need to move on. I smile at a squirrel as I hang a right to the once dusty trail now rejuvenated by the storm. The downed limbs seem to almost rejoice, happy to be unburdened by what they could no longer carry. I keep walking and a bare wooly caterpillar inches silently by my foot. A ladybug lands on a leaf nearby. This happenstance of greater meaning mocks the omens we humans have created and I chuckle at the joke these crawlers seem to play on me. A few strides away, water dapples in slow motion as a tufted titmouse lands on the hollow branch steeped in old mud and fungi. She skips, taking little hops around the jagged rocks of the shallow creek bed like she’s tiptoeing. Like she’s intruding on this little patch of planet that perhaps belongs to her more than any other planet. A twig snaps and she flies off, past the dead oak and curved limbs, the intricacy of the wooded barriers mimics her call. They are her home.When she lands she shuffles back and forth. Waiting and wondering for what is to come next. The expectancy is rather understood on this humble ground. Not over-bearing nor flaunting this small forest is not quick to brag but rather impressive to the small city girls eye view. Perhaps for the whistling bird it is the same. The slim trees and dry patches and mucky piles of leaves hold promise in what they aren’t: flashy, boastful, enthralling. Solace is rather found in its mundane breeze, a simplicity giving life to a pink and purple hazed dusk. The sounds of whispering feathers and random 5:11 pm church bells in the distance mute the loudness of the larger scope. Maybe even give the music of the surrounding rhythms fresh ears to be ready to listen.And for the little bird and the little girl, this is needed. A place to rejoice. A place to recenter. Perhaps the faint path is the one most important to tread. Perhaps it is what they both were waiting for.

• 

• 

I stand still in the hot sun that’s hitting my face; it’s warmth tinting my pale cheeks faint pink like the azalea petals lying crushed on the moss: a painter’s wet palette. The sun hits the remaining ice on the tips of the tree branches and slowly melts away all the pain and beauty of winter. The blossoms at my feet make me wonder what spring will break and I sigh with a contentedness that steals my fluttering mind. A butterfly glides past me. My entire life with the exception of two short years in Pilot Mountain before I could run and explore with my own direction have been spent in the city of Greensboro. My sense of place there was defined by my best friend on the other side of Holden road and fulfilling my book character childhood by living on Dogwood Drive with a yellow door. The simplicity was a facade though and the simmer of the pandemic was spent not trapped in my room like most but rather without one to call  my own. My family needed more space and internalizing that as away from me, I moved in with my best friend spending weeks at the ocean and hammocking by the lake. Our summer days spent roaming around the neighborhood, tan legs swinging from the stonewall starting out at the swans. In a sense, not having a place was the most accepted I’ve ever felt. But the bliss would fade with the daylight hours and evolve into the consistency I didn’t know how much I craved.

Early August my family moved into our new little house on Oak Ridge Rd with my hesitance to embody our new communities’ rural roots and my desire to spread my branches to inhabit the spaces of my friends and new family I had found in the eno at Hamilton Lake. Today, as I reflect on the die-hardness of my anti-Trump, pro-education embodiment that I thought contradicted my new home, I now realize that open space is necessary to achieve an open mind. And while my family is still quick to spread our (how to say “hatred” nicely?) opinions on the former president, we now laugh at the fact our Biden sign got stolen. Twice. We now laugh at how close we were at convincing my mom we needed chickens. I look now into our grass speckled with dandelions and picture the little chicks cooing happily around the well. I picture my hound dog Beatrice chasing them. Okay fine maybe we don’t need them. But all of  this to say I can now see my life shifting like the seasons I moved through within the big move. The change I loved to ignore has now become a change necessary to the fruitfulness of my spirit. A droplet of water falls on my head and I giggle, remembering my sister jumping in puddles the previous day in her hot pink Doc Martens.Her quick reply “Well what do you think rain is for?” I look into the cloudless sky and whisper a “thank you” to whoever is listening. My solitude now eases my mind and I pick up a lady bug crawling over my toe. A squirrel darting swiftly up the pine tree a few yards away interrupts my cliche moment of good luck and perhaps clarity, with a much appreciated reality check. But this new landscape I wake up to is my new reality. It is everything I never knew I needed.

• 

• 

The Forsythia Bush brings a burst of color to the greens and browns of the gravel tracing foliage. The arrival of spring has brought restored excitement to our family like the idea of the move created this time last spring. Now, the sun falls later and the chill crisp of winter is no longer frigid with dry wind. What we have been waiting for has arrived. With the expectancy I have carried slowly fading like the shivering “love you, see you soon”s shared on the stoop of my front porch, I now gaze at the stars and take all the time I like to say goodbye.I can laugh at the moon instead of running back into the light of the fire inside my house and the moon seems to laugh back. It humors me as if knowing how ironic it is that all is well–as if it is a secret. But the much needed arrival if warmer weather changes nonetheless and the purity of my first spring at my new home brings the glory of change in different ways of past seasons. While here there are no cherry blossoms tinting the driveway with a sticky brown residue, the pungent scent of Bradford pear blossoms cascade off my car as I drive East towards my life but away from my new home. The distance between the beautiful place I am getting to know introduces a strange duplicity to my life. I am beginning to recognize that boxes do not have to be sealed with clear packing tape and labeled “new house” or “funny friend” or “artsy girl.” The duality of my life in Oak Ridge and in Greensboro opens my eyes to the place in my heart I hold for both. And while I may not hear the same shitty mustang backfire down Friendly that Evan does, and text her at the ridiculosity of it all, she too is in a new home and so therefore the newness of it all can be shared. It can be refreshing. As I sit with my coffee on my back porch, I watch as a storm embraces my home. While it seems rather cliche, and almost boring to write about my sense of place not about the nights I spent in Denali National forest or hiking the Appalachian Trail but in my backyard, I have learned so much here about belonging and awareness. I know the feeling of the grass underneath my feet and how the cat climbs the dogwood tree and my dark barks in delight at the fireflies that swarm our little white cottage. The rain dotting our unkept lawn with fresh food for the henbit, a blue jay chases a robin up through a spruce tree. The purple my eye captures speaks to me. Above all the movement and madness, Alice Walker tells me that the purple I see in nature is God. And there is plenty of God in my new place. The stillness this wisdom brings grants me more clarity as to why I may inhabit this place and all of the life it brings. I trudge into the wet mud and pick up a fallen rhododendron blossom. As I walk back to my porch I smile a little, because the discomfort I feel now–my new discomfort: wet hair, muddy feet, and cherry laurel flakes on my sweatshirt–is a choice. For a lot of reasons this place is incredibly freeing to the close mindedness I possessed and was trying to deny. I inhale the humid scent of rain and exhale the day’s worries. I have no need to fear because now, I belong. My sister calls me to plant some begonias. Yes, this where I need to be.

https://goo.gl/maps/M2UJg2Wu5RLSsNRGA

Combine boiled bones, root vegetables, meat scraps, barley, garlic, Worcestershire and/or Marmite. Stew in whatever brown liquid you have on hand. Serve hot or cold with hardtack for mopping up and you’ve got Loblolly. Your sailors will be delighted. If you’re stuck in the infirmary—scurvy got the best of you? Plague?—you’re in luck. The ship’s “Loblolly boy” will be by soon with a hearty vessel of the dish. Recipes vary.

Some call for soaking corned beef in room temperature water for several hours, for example. The thread that ties all Loblolly recipes together, though, is their visual presentation. Bubbly, goopy and brown, Loblolly fails to appetize through description alone. It did, however, spark the imaginations of some colonial English seafarers. Upon reaching the bubbly, goopy and brown swamps of the Southeastern United States, the sailors used the word “Loblolly” as an apt descriptor of their miry environment. Eventually, the word came to be more closely associated with the trees that grow voraciously in southern swamps: the Loblolly pine.

Loblolly—Pinus taeda—has acquired plenty of other names, too. Rosemary pine, old field pine, and bull pine have all been used to describe the tree.

Within the etymology of its names, the Loblolly belies a core characteristic of its interaction and impact on the land. Nearly every name for the Loblolly refers not to the tree’s appearance, but rather to its character and location. Old field refers to the ease with which the tree gobbles up abandoned farmland; Rosemary refers to the aromatic quality the tree lends to the air around it; bull pine references the imposing bulk of a Loblolly stand; Loblolly because of the mire the tree thrives in.

The implicit etymological acknowledgement of the impact of place on tree and tree on place indicates a deep relationship between Loblolly and the land that is not similarly present in other trees. It shows that the Loblolly grow in distinctive landscapes, and that they lend distinctiveness to the land, too.

The Loblolly’s range stretches from Texas, around the Gulf, and up through the entirety of the South past Maryland. The most distinctive parts of the South belong to the Loblolly. Framed by their history of plantation slavery and sharecropping, Southern farms have driven racial and economic oppression in the Southern United States for centuries. Even now, agriculture charts an unsteady course for the South.

There’s a lot less farming happening now than there was 20, 50, 100, or 200 years ago. But the impacts of hundreds of years of farming in the South facilitated through racial, economic, and environmental oppression are deafeningly relevant. The South is defined by its farms. The truth of the Southern landscape is that its distinctiveness is inextricably tied to layers upon layers of oppression. What comes after slavery, sharecropping, environmental devastation, economic devastation, and the inescapable hardships each of those injustices has wrought?

The farm is gone. The field is empty. Soon, it will be full of pine trees.

As society advances technologically, we see that human interaction declines. As human interaction declines, there is less of a chance to meet someone who you truly connect with. Industrialization has been a gateway for our society to evolve to what it is today. Many factories opened as well as many businesses. Human beings continue to find new ways of making money and life more efficient. Though, there are several things that have diminished and continue to fade. In this new age where women are allowed to work and make their own money, raising children or having any at all takes the backseat, and there is nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has the same aspirations and certainly not everyone wants to be a mother or parent. However, the issue is that basic human interaction and relationship formation has faded and has become heavily dependent on technology. People do not meet in person anymore simply due to the fact that there is an entire world at everyone’s fingertips. So physical human connection is on the road to becoming obsolete. What many people seem to forget is that we still need some form of care and human interaction in order to thrive.

Society has evolved and has faced various transitions over the past 100 years. One phenomenon that has drastically changed is marriage rates. Before the industrial revolution, economy was more agricultural based. Agricultural economies take more labor power to thrive and produce. That being said, people were more likely to have a lot of kids in order to provide that labor to cultivate the land. However, when the Industrial Revolution began, the family dynamic started to change seeing as how factories began to form and workers were needed. These factories paid more than what farms would provide. Work started to not be at home anymore but away from it. Which in turn affected family structure as well.

There’s something funny about thinking what it’s like to be human. Humans are very frail creatures. Easily killed. We have created weapons to make it even easier to kill among us. Can humans even be considered humans at all? It seems that we resemble animals more than what you would call a human. Sometimes even worse. In reality, we just found a new way to fight and kill among ourselves. We’re like lions competing over territory. Yet lions fight more fairly than humans. We don’t settle for killing one person, we have to wipe out whole cities. All these wars that have been fought and for what reason? It makes no sense to me. People come up with ways of justifying inhumane behavior. It seems as if the world is in turmoil and has been for many centuries. There have been an insane amount of advances in our technology that make our life a lot easier. However, it seems to be destroying our planet. Humans have a way of killing life forms that we may need down the line.

I believe that the idea of being a human is still Eurocentric. The idea of the human experience was only given one right answer. The colonists were afraid of what they did not understand. The people in Africa and the Americas that were developing and dare I say thriving in their own right, were stripped away of their humanity. They were treated worse than animals, tortured, enslaved and killed for no reason. I believe as humans, we have the right to live, be treated kindly and express our ideas. A diverse culture is a rich culture. Each society and culture had something to contribute to this world. There is no right way to be human. There never was. The way of life of other human beings was criminalized and looked down upon. 

Many people fail to see just how our home is dying. This egotistical way of thinking is so human. It’s terrifying. Of course these advances are nice. We are able to exchange ideas and travel to places no one would dream of doing so easily. The airplane is one of the amazing inventions that has expanded our world and perspective. Humans are quite curious creatures. That was what I believe to be a motive for many of our inventions. One recent invention that has expanded our horizons more is the internet. We get to meet people from all over the world just by sitting in front of a screen. Which further enhances our understanding of the human experience. 

As much destruction that humans have caused, we have also enhanced our own lifestyle. Though, I must wonder what we have done to enhance the health of our own planet. When I think of humans, our bad characteristics stand out. We have done so much damage to our home yet there is something potentially beautiful within us. The beauty of intelligence and independent thought. We have developed knowledge and adapted rapidly to our surroundings. If only we could use the power we have for something other than war or destruction, maybe we could live in harmony. Though that seems like a beautiful dream. Humankind is plagued by greed and desires. No one seems to ever be truly settled with where they are. We have consumed rainforests and killed off species of animals without a second thought. Even if some of us are conscious of it, we will continue to be plagued and no change will happen.